Senate faced with second vote on Medicaid bill

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania state Senate plans to meet shortly to decide whether to force the issue of expanding Medicaid eligibility to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians.

The Senate's Wednesday voting session comes two days after House Republicans killed a provision written by the Senate to require Gov. Tom Corbett to seek federal approval for the Medicaid expansion by Oct. 1.

Corbett, a Republican, has refused to say whether he'd support or veto such a measure. The Senate initially approved it Sunday night, 40-10, in a wider piece of budget-related legislation as part of an 11th-hour effort to force the House and Corbett to support it.

Senate leaders say they vetted the provision with the federal government and wrote certain conditions into it to make it more amenable to Republicans.